Oh, baby, baby 2.0 me one more time !

If you have not seen a 2.0 article recently, where have you been? Maybe I'm getting old but I'm kinda 2.0'd out at the moment. Here's is a small snapshot:

• Web 2.0
• Enterprise 2.0
• Infrastructure 2.0
• Storage 2.0
• Government 2.0
• Life 2.0
• Religion 2.0

And just today in a channel magazine "box moving 2.0" (it has to do with selling hardware, OK), come on give me a break ! how about Kids 2.0 well actually I'm at 5.0 so there.


It's great to get new buzz and hype in the industry and life in general but it sort of feels a little like the latest chocolate bar advert at times, same stuff new wrapper. How about Life 2.0 (sorry it's already there as I found out today) or Hairdo 2.0, Marriage 2.0, oops that is already so yesterday.

2.0 is not something new like we have all of a sudden had an epiphany. but isn't it more like a gradual realisation that with the new technology and more cost effective ways of doing things we are able to create and deliver solutions that are different and new. Then marketing gets in the way and wants to label and package it all up. Consultant see and opportunity for new service line 2.0 consulting fees. Maybe I need to blog 2.0?

ECM Standard Steering Group Announced Today

ECM Standard Steering Group Announced Today Here is a link to the announcement (5th August) of the people on the Steering group for the BSI led sandards creation for Enterprise Content Management (ECM).

Alan Pelz-Sharpe from CMS Watch is noted as being on the Steering Committee and therefore I will be keeping in touch with him to see how things are progressing. Of course AIIM are involved as well. The Contenet Group are leading the Steering Group. Publication of the standard is expected at the end of this year!

ECM - Information Infrastructure

"Information infrastructure" interesting term! Well this is a term that I use to try and raise awareness that like any building it is the infrastructure supports all the other ECM deployment areas.

Information infrastructure is about putting the right information thinking and planning in place to make our ECM rollout a real success. Just as in building projects the infrastructure is not sexy, but it is essential to the structure and longevity of the overall building. If you have noticed any large building project it is the initial foundations and infrastructure that seem to take the longest. But once this in place the rest seems to take off, according to the plan, so to is it with ECM projects, you need a solid information infrastructure to build on.


If I use the term "information architecture" generally people are confused, and think in terms of the web definition of architecture. This definition has more of a focus on the structure that needs to be in place for the navigation and the web side of the Manage, Process & Deliver information chain. Yes there are linkages between the overall architecture and the infrastructure part but the core fundamentals of infrastructure go well beyond just the web.

Information infrastructure encompasses the core pieces of content classification and structural metadata that must be defined in advance to ensure that there is a clear understanding of what needs to be managed and how it will be managed in a business context. Along with this understanding you also need to define and map the set of business rules that will provide the glue to the content relationships. Then once this has been put in place you can concentrate on navigation and findability as the infrastructure is now in place to make the upper layers successful.

So that is a general look at Information Infrastructure. Soon we will look at bringing some of these pieces together realitive to MOSS 2007.

ECM - MOSS 2007 Taking a general look

Is it bird? Is it a plane? Well with MOSS 2007 it sometimes feels that way. So the question is what is MOSS 2007? Let's start by quoting from the executive summary from the CMS Watch Report on SharePoint:

However, what remains less clear more than a year after the launch of
SharePoint 2007 is where the product actually fits into the
enterprise. SharePoint is truly a collection of individual components that
interact together to varying degrees, but require extra work to weld into a
cohesive package. And unfortunately not all components of SharePoint are created
equal. In other words, SharePoint is well suited to some requirements, but
certainly not all.

So folks, what is clear is that you need to be careful as to what you use MOSS for and how it is used. Some features work and play well out of the box, while others require development (that's cutting code folks). In addition I would say that MOSS 2007 is primarily a platform of services that may or may not suit what you are trying to achieve within an overall solution.

Now when I say platform of services I mean that what you get is the core services but sometimes it feels like you need to run your own power line from the curb to the house to get all the appliances working.

However, I must say that the set of services that are supplied in MOSS 2007 are feature rich, and on first look there is something for everyone. The overall message however is that prior planning will prevent a poor implementation, especially with SharePoint or MOSS 2007 as it is also known. Plan, Plan and then execute. Do not go direct to setup or base install, you will regret that somewhere down the track.

For a look at the top 10 things to avoid with MOSS 2007 click the link. Note that the first two points are not even technology rated and Setup.exe comes in at number 3. You should ask yourself before you slap that CD into the drive, have I though about why I am doing this and what we are trying to achieve here?

But back to MOSS 2007. Feature, feature, feature. Well to start there is really great

So firstly, it is a platform, and when we say platform that means a rich set of infrastructure services and some front end services out of the box. With any platform there is a degree of development that needs to happen to make the platform useful for your situation. An overview of the functionality provided by MOSS 2007 is as follows: (Diagram courtesy of Microsoft)

As you can see from the "Pizza wheel" there is a wide range of services and functions that are available as part of the platform. Here downunder (that's NZ folks) the main areas that are being implemented are as follows:

• Intranet (Portal) and Internet (WCM from the Content Management piece)
• Document Collaboration
• Forms and Workflow

Of course Search is something that is everywhere. With MOSS 2007 you get the ability to use Search across MOSS Site, and also to extend it to the web and file systems. The Enterprise license also gives you access to add search into line of business applications and bring a rich search experience into the MOSS Portal. With the recent acquisition of FAST there is a wider Search story that Microsoft is able to present and I am looking with interest as to how this unfolds.

Another area that I am keen to see get going in is records management, however this will require some planning as here in New Zealand there is very much a continuum life cycle approach to records management rather than the traditional here it is a document and "bling" now its a record. The life cycle approach is a view that starts from the time of creation of an item and this item is then managed in a "records context". Microsoft in NZ have done some great work to get connected to the government market and has developed a jump start pack for MOSS 2007 and NZ government agencies. There are also partner organisations that are now building Records Management add-ons for MOSS 2007 that are very exciting and will be a big change to the way that customers deploy MOSS 2007.

With the release of a solid records management add on that fits the NZ market MOSS 2007 will move from the Intranet collaboration space to the main stream records and document management fields, this is both exciting and scary. As I have said before when Microsoft decides to enter a market space it does not take long for them to start to dominate and certainly in NZ this is starting to come to pass.

ECM What's up with Consolidation?

Consolidation news has been big over the last year and tracking back through some old threads and links has been an interesting catch up.

In general consolidation is a natural occurrence as companies look to dominate market share and the battle for customers. I found a slide deck share from John Mancini (The One Minute ECM Guru series) which covers consolidation very quickly.

What was especially telling was the slides that outlined the number of companies that have been acquired from the likes of OpenText and EMC. Looks more like the local Org chart of the multinational itself. How are they going to get that all together in a single, flexible, scalable platform? Will Consolidation provide you and me any benefits

Better product to create better solutions in a more cost effective manner?
Better Service and reduced complexity across the ECM stack?
Better capability to be able to federate across multiple repositories?

Only time will tell if we are to see a major shift of benefit to the customer.

What I do know is that all this consolidation creates an opportunity for new players to slip into the middle ground, especially now that the Gartner Magic Quadrant now looks more like a sausage in shape as the vendors spread out.

The big opportunity is for players such as Alfresco to get the ground swell going and gain market acceptance of Open Source and get in amongst the large and heavy incumbents with the promotion of a new and exciting model and innovative and flexible architecture.

Microsoft (Already a Gartner player) has the opportunity to take advantage of current consolidation to dominate through a "ECM for the Masses" approach thereby driving mass market adoption of ECM type deployments and pulling through other partners in a cost effective delivery of ECM projects across departments and eventually into the enterprise. The key for them will be what next past the MOSS 2007 release?

Plan, Plan, Plan, then Execute

So three days at the Sales Conference. Someone has to do it, right! Well the great speaking event this year was two 20+ year old adventurers. Justin and James a couple of ordinary guys that think big and go for their dreams.

They had kayaked 3318km, braved 10 metre swells, faced howling winds of over 50 knots, endured severe food and sleep deprivation, wasting muscles and adverse winds and currents to become the first kayak expedition across the Tasman Sea as well as become the longest trans oceanic kayaking expedition undertaken by two expeditionary individuals.

But was was more interesting to me was that while it took 62 days to complete the mission there was 4 years of planning and hard graft that went into making the execution happen. I had the pleaseur to speak to Justin just before dinner and told him the math.

For every day of rowing there was in rounded terms 23.5 days of planning, and boy did they plan. They started by created pages of questions to which they had no answer and then set about looking to acquire through experts and from their own inquiry the answers necessary to create a blueprint for success.

Then having a list of question they then set about looking to build a virtual team of experts that would share the vision and who couldprovide them with the best minds and materials for answering the questions and propelling them forward towards success.

Having got the team and the questions starting to be nailed they also focused on making sure that they had a risk plan that covered off all the likely events that would or might happen while in their execution phase.

Great stuff guys ! and a great lesson for ECM'ers that are heading into the dream of content management, do the plan, work the plan, do the plan and then execution is simply a playing out of the moves that have already been set in place.

In fact if you take the 4 years *365 days and add 62 days and then do the division.

Planning = 96% of total
Execution = 4% of total

No wonder success was achieved, because as they stated we had the blueprint. For more information on this amazing feat check out James and Justin at their site crossing the ditch.

Analytics a mystery?

Funny title for today's blog? Well given that it has been seven weeks without a post I was checking feedburner, google analytics and technorati for what has been happening while I was away.

Now to get some facts up front, I know that this blog is not a heavy traffic site because I get about 11-13 subscribers per day, mainly from feeders, so I guess out of that there may not even be a read against the blog.

What I find interesting is the trend of how people get to the site. From the Google analytics there is a 50% search page hit, 42% referral and 8% direct traffic. Interesting that over time the search engine traffic has steadily increased. After initially putting up the blog I did a little research and took some time to get metadata into the page headers so that search engines could find the titles, metadata.

This seems to have made all the difference to getting some traffic to the site. Also I have been impressed that although I have not blogged for some 6-7 weeks the content that is on the site is still being accessed by visitors. Well, enough on the analytics mystery I will need to get back to some serious ECM blogging soon !

ECM and SaaS. Intersection or Contradiction?

Well it has been over 6 weeks of no posting, but I can honestly say that I have had a ball with all my girls in the US and Canada, even getting a free 5.4 earthquake ride in Disneyland on the way back out! As one of my girls said "Dad, that was a Disneyland, no queue, free, rollercoaster ride." Right on girl. Well it's is back to getting some posts moving and figuring if you are all stile out there or given up the ghost.

So on with the posting, ECM and Software as a Service. I have been looking at this for some time and trying to figure out where it fits, is there an intersection or are they contra to each other?

From the conversations I have had with vendors and observations that I have seen from customers it seems that SaaS is currently a convenient niche looking to break into the wider ECM big time if it can.

In most cases I am seeing SaaS ECM type solutions fufilling a role of converging multiple independent parties to enable collaboration around documents and content relevant to a joint project. Therefore the solution is document / project specific and the main drivers for going the SaaS route seem to be speed, convenience and cost effectiveness.

Speed - Because x clicks and you are up and going
Convenience - Because it is and you can bypass all the firewall and security hassles of the internal IT Shop.
Cost Effective - Becuase you can pay monthly and when the project is finished shut it down. No harware and software and installation costs required. Only the price for usage.

But coming back to the reason for the SaaS decision. It is a point solution that is generally focused at this time around the collaboration and sharing of documents. Some vendors such as SalesForce are using SaaS ECM as an extension to the CRM option, while companies such as SpringCM are extending out from document management into business process management to get more business automation going.

SaaS still has a way to go, but it is an option that needs to be considered in the mix. Maybe one day we will see a combination of inside / outside solutions to fit the overall enterprise ECM play and if that is achieved then we will truly see an intersection of the two pieces.